Staring At Each Other

Staring At Each Other

Taj Maha

India

July 2004

I don't now what they were doing here, just sitting at the entrance of the Taj Maha.  It was mid afternoon and the sun was blazing hot. And they just sat there, indifferent to the heat that was burning my bare feet and scorching my lily white skin.  They stared at me and I started at them.  As I looked at them, I marvels at their beauty.  I wonder why they were staring at me.

Car Mechanic

Car Mechanic
Henan Province, China
November 2015

He sat all day, on the street, waiting for business. The small taxis, run by charged car batteries, pulled over and he worked on them on demand.  At the end of the day, he locked up the cabinets and dragged his cart home. He worked alone but he spent the day socializing with all of the other transient workers on the street. He would be back the next day, maybe at the same spot or maybe a little further down the street but always in the same general area.

When it rained, he huddled under a storefront awning.  When it was cold, he bundled up. On sunny days, he sought relief under one of the few trees on the street.

It didn't take long for a taxi to be up and running again.  Usually, a tire needed more air or a battery needed to be recharged or some small wire needed to be replaced.  After a few minutes and the exchange of a few small bills, the taxi driver was on his way again.  And the mechanic went back to his idle time, waiting for the next customer.

Tea Merchant

Tea Merchant

Henan Province, China

November 2015

The minute I saw this magnificent teapot, I wanted to try this tea. This woman sold this tea drink from her cart on the street.  It was dreadful, dreadful, dreadful.  There were a lot of ingredients in this beverage and most of the things added were unidentifiable to me.  I can usually stomach anything.  But I took one sip of this drink and I wanted to spit it out.  I didn't because the woman was standing right next to me and anxious to seek my approval.  I nodded, swallowed and moved on.  As soon as she was out of my sight, I tossed what remained in my cup as quickly as possible.  It was dreadful.

CARE

CARE

I volunteer my time to work for CARE, an international nonprofit organization that focuses on eradicating poverty by empowering women and children. Their work is currently in 95 countries, reaching millions and millions of people in developing countries.

I am a citizen advocate and I go to Capitol Hill once a year to meet with lawmakers and encourage them to vote for legislation that offers humanitarian relief to the 250 million people in this world who live in abject poverty. I feel a sense of urgency and great sadness to see how easy it would be to address so many of these issues that affect the quality of life for so many people. Eradicating much of our poverty is within our reach today. But determining solutions has become so political that we would rather allow people to die now than to prove our politics wrong.

Efforts to help others in need should never be political but should always be the focus of all humanity.

CARE.org

A Typical Day on Safari

A Typical Day on Safari

 Southern Africa

 July 2001

I spent the month of July in Southern Africa on safari. We traveled through South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe. There were 20 of us, 15 from Europe, four from Australia and me, the lone American. Matt served as our guide and driver and Lucas was the cook. We had a beat up old truck and camping gear. We traveled over 3000 miles and at the end of the month that was still not enough for me. I wanted to see more.

The rhythm of our days were pretty similar. I was never sure when the day started because I didn’t have a watch and that made it difficult to determine when I should get up. I usually woke up sometime during the night but never knew it was 2 AM for 6 AM. That may not seem like a problem for others but it was for me.  I always had to go to the bathroom and my decisions were different depending on what time of night was. Urgency also plays a factor as well. And the fact that the bathroom was never convenient just added to the stress of the situation. If It was 6 AM, I will try to hold it till 630 when I had to get up but 2 AM posed other problems, other decisions.

Each morning I would hear the “zip” of someone’s tent zipper and then I would say a little prayer that this was just somebody else what to get up to relieve themselves. If I heard just one zipper I made a huge effort to sleep as quickly as possible because I knew my time to sleep was limited.

However, if I heard multiple zips, I rolled over and complained to myself. The night had flown by too, too quickly once again. Frantz was one of the early risers. He always called to Eva, his wife. She would respond in German. Then I would hear the cook rattle some pots and pans. And I would be filled with morning dread. Everyone was up and starting their day. Then I would hear it. Someone would be outside my tent and ask the others, “did anybody wake Bridget yet?” That was going to be my first and only wake up call for the morning. So I had no other choice but to surrender to the harsh realities of the day and face the dark chilly morning.

This is the first trip I’ve taken that I really have to pay attention to my eyeglasses. So the first thing I did was feel around for my flashlight and then find my glasses. Every day I can’t find them right away and that sends me into a mild panic. I did eventually find them but after I ripped apart everything in its path.

Then I had to find my shoes and of course I had never had the energy to tie my shoelaces. So I wore them as slippers.  I never had them on correctly so I stumbled over everything in my way in the tent. And it appeared to me as of the bottom of my tent door rose just a little bit each and every day and I tripped on my way out every morning.

Once all my junk was assembled and jammed into my ripped duffel bag, I threw everything outside the tent. I would then complain about having to disassemble my tent once again. I hated doing this. If I could’ve found some someone to take care of my tent, I think I would’ve been a happier camper. Breaking in the tent down wasn’t really a problem. Trying to stuff that damn tent back in its sack always proved to be a challenge. Everyone else’s tent seemed so nice and neat. I always had something protruding from the top. Matt frequently made fun of my efforts. But so what. I don’t really care.

Breakfast was nondescript but hurried. Because I was the last one up, I was always coming to breakfast at the tail end. By the time I got there, other were cleaning up so I had a quick cup of lukewarm tea and some sort of stale biscuits. While I was drinking my tea I attempted to help load up the camp equipment and then we were off.

Once the trunk was packed, we were on the road. We left the campsite by 7 AM when the sun was just beginning to emerge. And some places the stars still illuminated the skies as we took off. Most mornings a fiery sunrise entertained us as we settled into our morning drive.

At 7:30 AM I was wearing my blouse, my windbreaker, two fleece jackets, a neck gaiter, hood, gloves and some days, my blanket. By 10, I took the neck gaiter and top jacket off. By noon the second jacket came off and found its way somewhere on the floor of our filthy dirty truck.  in the early afternoon the windbreaker came off. By four the windbreaker was back on. Around six the sun would begin to go down and the first fleece jacket came back on. By seven the other jacket was on. I was wearing the gloves and the neck gator. My wardrobe didn’t change much this month.

Midmorning we stopped somewhere and watched something of great amazement.  We saw prehistoric trees or 600-year-old plants or cave drawings or birds or packs of wild animals. We would stop and take photos and move around the truck so everyone had the opportunity to get a good view.  We stood in silence as we watched a herd of lions eat a zebra. We stretched our necks to see the minute bird off in the distant tree. We tried to count the hundreds of impalas running pass our truck. We looked everything up in the guide books I purchased along the way.  We recorded everything we saw and everything we saw filled us with joy.

Lunch was around 1 PM. If we are on the road, Matt just pulled over to some nondescript place and open the side of truck and Lucas made lunch. Our menu was the same everyday: lunch meat, cabbage salad, stale bread and tomatoes. One day I heard Erica describer our lunch menu to some other travelers and the way she described it you would’ve thought we were eating from a high end restaurant. Nothing she said was incorrect or embellished but she spoke with so much enthusiasm and loyalty for travel company that I had to stand back and think if we were on the same trip. The food wasn’t good but it wasn’t bad either.   That didn’t matter to me. I didn’t care about the food. I was just glad to be in Africa. But I didn’t think I’d ever talk about our food with enthusiasm. I had a moment of respect for Erica. Her enthusiasm was refresh.

We would get back on the truck and we would be off again.  But now it was time for a little snooze.  I’d sleep until it was just too bothersome to fight off the constant jarring sensation of my head falling off my makeshift head rest.

We would stop again in the afternoon and again see something magnificent.  We were always in search of the big five: lions, elephants, rhino, leopard, and cape buffalo. We saw at least one of them each day. And no matter how many lions we saw, each one was a bonus.

We got to a camp site by five and set up our site. Once my tent was up, I liked to take a little nap to celebrate my efforts to get the damn tent up correctly.

Dinner was sometime after six. Matt cooked everything over an open fire and charred everything. At first I attempted to get my meat less charred, then I reconsidered, as I did not want to get food poisoning.

Before and after dinner we would all huddle together around the fire telling stories. We would recap the day and we will try to get Matt to tell us what to expect for the next day. Those of us who were native English speakers told more stories than the others. The quieter members of the group just listened and then encouraged us to keep talking.

Jill and Warren loved to entertain us. Sometimes they would sing. Sometimes they would bring out Erica’s guitar and they broke a string every time they played it. Sometimes they had us playing charades. Sometimes they would insist we share others whiskeys or wine. Whatever we did, we enjoyed each other’s company.

Around 9:30 the group would begin to disburse. Some went to their tents. If there was a bar at the campsite, some wandered over there. Others use this time to catch up on their journal writing. Others ran to the shower in hopes of finding warm water. By 11 o’clock all was quiet.

Once my lights went out, I’d love to lay in my sleeping bag and just listen. Our tent area sounded like the United Nations. When everyone retired to their tents, they returned to using their native language. I would hear all sorts of undistinguished sounds from the Germans and the Italians, the Danish and the French. Jenna and Christina would talk loudly and laugh heartily.  I always wondered what they discussed. Lucas would talk Afrikaans to his fellow cooks. They would make a clicking sound with their tongues.  I tried to make that sound but I could never master it.  Sometimes I couldn’t distinguish one language from the other.

Animal sounds entertained me each night. Each sound seemed as if the animal was walking right outside my tent, just waiting to make me it’s next meal. Hippos could be heard many nights. And during the course of our trip we heard donkeys, baboons, monkeys, warthogs, dogs, hyenas and jackals.  One night an elephant wandering around our site. I didn’t want to tangle with any of these animals.  I tried to fall asleep in spite of my fears of all of this commotion going on outside.  I had to get to sleep. The mornings came too early for my taste.

Where The Buffalo Roam

Where The Buffalo Roam

Cluster's National Park

South Dakota

July 2012

I traveled to South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore.  I had never thought about visiting this monument.  But I had been teaching in China for the past semester.  When asked where they would like to visit in the USA, one of my students mentioned she wanted to see the beautiful tribute to our leaders.  So I came home and made plans to see what I could see.

Mount Rushmore was underwhelming to me.  It was interesting but only for about ten minutes and then it didn't hold my attention anymore. I took about 50 photos of the the monument form every angle but then deleted all but two of them. Really, I had one too many.

But I will tell you what did capture my interest: the buffalo roaming the nearby national park.  I couldn't get enough of them.  they tended to concentrate in one area of the park.  So we found ourselves making our way there each night as the buffalo tended to room in small herds as they liked for a place to settle down for the night.

A road cut through the middle of this area and cars were allowed to travel a loop which allowed close access to the animals.  Sometimes the animals stood in the middle of road and blocked traffic.  Most of us loved these moments which allowed us to see these animals up close and personal.  But others who sued this road as a path to get home each night found it annoying and did their best to nudge and hurry the buffalo along to the other side.

They were massive, powerful and mighty in their presence. I watched them for hours and that still wasn't enough.

Thanksgiving 2015

Thanksgiving 2015

Sias University

Henan Province, China

I am teaching in China at Sias University.  I live in an apartment in the foreign faculty dormitory. There are 125 of us from the USA.  So as Thanksgiving begins to roll around, the university administration recognizes they have to make some sort of accommodations for us. There will be a traditional dinner and we are allowed to cancel our afternoon classes. All other faculty are not afforded this luxury.  It's business as usual for everyone else on campus.

We may bring guests but a dinner ticket for this meal is $30.  A regular guest ticket, any other night, is just $5. Additionally, our guests may not be Chinese.  They must be American or some other foreign nationality.  No Chinese are allowed to celebrate this unknown holiday.

All of the cafeteria staff have to report early that day and stay until the last of us have had our fill of this strange food.  Seven turkeys are cooked.  A large vat of mashed potatoes are made. Faculty members are allowed to make large quantities of family recipes. So the kitchen is packed with chefs and cooks and the atmosphere is chaotic and nosiey. There have been no efforts to coordinate what people are making.  So there are a few duplicates on the yam dishes and green bean casseroles. Because there is no bread in China, stuffing presents a challenge.  But some faculty knew to stock up on stuffing mix when they were last in the USA. There are plenty of desserts that are too sweet for the Chinese taste buds. We are even served beer and wine. It is a huge effort to make this quantity of food and everyone expresses their gratitude to the staff.

We all gather in the lobby which has been transformed into a large dining room.  At 6PM, grace is offered and we line up.  The turkeys are brought out, plopped on the table and the rest of the food is served.  There is no presentation of the meal.  There is only quick delivery service.  So one or two faculty members step off and offer to carve.  By the time they finished carving, there was nothing left for them to eat.  And that is just too bad, nothing else is offered to them. The empty carcasses are scooped up and floating in a broth soup the next day. Noting goes to waste in China.  So many of them are so thankful any day they can get anything to eat.